Mild-to-Wild ride report by Tom

19Jul

Finally, I get to write a report; something I was hoping was not going to happen anytime soon. Five riders participated in this week’s ride, it was a cool day. We started at about 19:07 with the hope that some riders will join us. We went went straight across Nellmapius to the bottom of Cornwall. Further down we got a bit disorientated ending up at some structure that look like an Eskom substation. This included having to go over a ditch. It wasn’t long that we found our way parallel to R21 on the western side of the freeway down towards Hennops. We went under the bridge then we had our first speed zone. Which didn’t go very well for me but, as they say, "die agteros kom ook in die kraal"

My observation was that we did more up hills than on any other day that I cycled with the group. We continued up the hill parallel to R21 but on the Eastern side of the freeway towards Tembisa or should I say towards ORT. W e then took a left turn into the wilderness still going up. Then we had a long downhill and we also had a downhill speed zone. Further down we took a left turn that led us to the narrow tunnel under R21 and then to another uphill. As if that was not enough, we had to do a speed zone on one of the toughest uphill, it was my first time riding on that particular hard uphill.

It was on the other side of this uphill that lead to me qualifying to write this report. After a long uphill a downhill is always a pleasure to ride on. The jury is still out as to exactly what happened, but it wasn’t the nicest way to get off the bike. It was indeed a serious fall and I ended up in hospital. Although I was in serious pain, the guys were great and I must say I truly appreciate everything that they did for me. At one stage I was wondering just how am I going to get out of that place to hospital, fortunately I could still remember my wife’s number and she was called and what was going through my head was how on earth is she going to get to where we are.

Fortunately Johan came up with a plan to go and wait for her somewhere and it worked. Off record, this was the fastest response time I’ve ever had from my wife. We went to hospital and I was discharged the following day which happened to be my birthday. As for the injuries, my left face is swollen, I can’t open my jaw completely wide, I have a big black eye, the wound above my left eye was given three stitches. My collar bone is not broken, but I suffered a torn ligament. As of today (19 July 2015) I’m still in pain but recovering. My wife is not too sure whether I should continue riding at night, so I’m going to have to find a way of sneaking out every Thursday night with the hope that there will not be another accident.

Once more, Oom Gert and the team, thank you ever so much. I experienced team work live.